NOW & THEN
11 JULY
1274: Robert the Bruce was born at Turnberry Castle. 1533: Pope Clement VII excommunicated King Henry VIII. 1572: Sir Humphrey Gilbert landed in the Netherlands with a band of English volunteers to fight the Spanish.
1690: William III defeated the deposed James II at the Battle of the Boyne.
1776: Captain Cook sailed from Portsmouth in the Resolution, accompanied by the Discovery, on his third and last expedition.
1804: Aaron Burr. the US vicepresident, mortally wounded Alexander Hamilton, the former secretary of the Treasury, in a duel. 1810: Napoleonic Empire annexed Holland. 1818: John Keats visited the first home of Robert Burns in Alloway and wrote his sonnet Written In the cottage where Burns was born. 1848: Waterloo Station in London was opened. 1859: The chime of Big Ben in the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament was heard for the first time.
1881: The “ghost-ship” Flying Dutchman was sighted at 4am 50 miles off the Cape of Good Hope, by the crew of HMS Inconstant.
1895: Auguste and Louis Lumiere, who invented film, demonstrated it to scientists.
1902: British prime minister Lord Salisbury resigned.
1915: The German cruiser Köningsberg sank off Dar-essalaam.
1916: Germany launched its final offensive in the Battle of Verdun.
1922: The Hollywood Bowl opened.
1924: Scottish athlete Eric Liddell won the Olympic 400 metres sprint in Paris.
1930: Don Bradman hit 309 runs in one day for Australia against England at Leeds, and went on to score 334.
1944: Franklin D Roosevelt announced that he would run for a fourth term as US president.
1948: The first air bombing of Jerusalem took place.
1950: Puppets Andy Pandy, Teddy and Looby Loo first appeared on BBC television. The episodes were repeated for more than 25 years.
1962: The first transatlantic TV transmission took place via the satellite Telstar I.
1963: Army in Ecuador ousted president Carlos Julio Arosemena, saying he was a Communist sympathiser.
1969: David Bowie released his single Space Oddity and the Rolling Stones released Honky Tonk Women.
1973: A Brazilian Boeing 707 crashed near Paris, killing 122 people.
1975: China’s great terracotta army was uncovered near the ancient capital of Xian. More than 6,000 life-sized warriors were made in about 206 BC to guard the tomb of the first emperor.
1995: Actor Hugh Grant was fined £750 by a Los Angeles court and put on probation for two years when he admitted lewd conduct with a prostitute.
1995: More than 8,000 Bosnian men and children (all Bosniaks) were killed by Serbian troops commanded by Ratko Mladic in Potocari near Srebrenica Bosnia and Herzegovina.